Downtown Oslo was an eerie scene of broken glass and stunned residents following Friday’s attacks, said a University of Hawaii student studying there this summer.
"Overall I think there’s just this big sense of confusion here right now. People are on edge, and everyone’s trying to make contact with their loved ones," Morgan Carmody, 21, said in a phone interview with the Star-Advertiser.
Carmody, a UH-Manoa political science major from San Diego, said she was at a coffeehouse about a 15-minute drive from the capital district when she heard a blast in the distance. Officials said the explosion happened at 3:26 p.m. local time (3:26 a.m. in Hawaii).
"I heard the explosions, but at the time I just thought it was thunder because it’s been so rainy here," Carmody said.
She took a train to her friend’s house in Rosteds gate, five blocks from the capital, and learned what had happened.
"We were on the street headed out to get groceries, and we see all these little shops with glass blown out of its windows and all these police officers," said Carmody, who is studying at the University of Oslo.
Carmody and her friend walked into a kebab shop, one of the few businesses still open despite the fact its windows had been blown out, to watch the news on the shop’s television.
"We were standing in this shop with no window and glass all on the ground. Glass is everywhere. When you walk you can hear it clinking, and then we saw all the shopkeepers sweeping up all the glass on the street."
Carmody, who will return to Honolulu in two weeks for her senior year at UH-Manoa, said the citizens maintained a sense of order. "It’s pretty calm now. People are kind of just milling around trying to understand what happened," she said at 11 p.m. Oslo time.
"It’s just really surreal right now. This type of stuff doesn’t happen in Norway."
